Don’t you love those group
adventure movies? You know, the ones with a ragtag group of misfits
who each have their special skill--Ocean’s 11, the Great Escape,
Power Rangers? Rhetoric had that too and they were called the Canon
of Ten of the Ten Attic Orators. Like most canonical lists, they
weren’t clumped together until they well and dead.
Aristophanes of Byzantiumand
Aristarchus of Samothracecompiled what’s called the Alexandrian Canon
including these ten hotshots of the 5th and 4th century BCE. Later,
a scholar who was probably not Plutarch, called the
Psuedo-Plutarch, wrote “The Lives of the Ten Orators” to chronicle
the Rat Pack of Classical Greek rhetoric. A couple of these ten
will be familiar to you--Demosthenes and Isocrates. Demosthenes and
Isocrates are like the George Clooney and Brad Pitt of the Ten
Attic Orators, getting most of the screen time and most of the
glory. We’ve have individual episodes on each of them as well as
individual episodes on some of the works they’ve written. Mere
Rhetoric isn’t alone in emphasizing these super stars of the Canon
of Ten: the Psuedo Plutarch spends almost 3500 words on Demosthenes
and a paltry 392 on Aeschines. So, to make it up to them, we’re
going to dedicate eight episodes of Mere Rhetoric to the
othermembers of the Canon of Ten, the
Bernie Macs and Casey Afflecks of Classical Greek
Rhetoric.

And today we’re going to start
with the anti-Demosthenes, Aeschines.

Aeschines hated Demosthenes. The
most famous peice he ever wrote was a legal argument called Against
Ctetisphon (k’tes-i-fawn), which really could have been “Against
Demosthenes and His Stinkin’ Friend.”

First, some background.
Aeschines came from a modest background. He wasn’t destitute,
certainly but it is “generally doubted that his father could have
afforded to provide him with an education in rhetoric” and he had
to marry up to enter a public career (9). The Pseudo Plutarch
describes him as “neither nobly born nor rich.” Demosthenes,
on the other hand, was born to privilege and had a first-rate
education. Demosthenes was educated at the schools os Isocrates and
maybe Plato; Aeschines was taught by someone named Leodamas, whose
reputation in history is partially that he was a mathematician and
partially that Plato may have taught him math. Not a particularly
impressive training for a future political rhetor.

Aeschines was a good performer
and did a stint as an actor, and while this wasn’t as shameful as
it would become in later centuries, Demosthenes accuses Aeschines
of being a bad actor, which is pretty shameful (10). Unlike
Demosthenes, he never was a professional speechwriter--every speech
we have is about his own political concerns, and all three of them
may be all that there is to have--nothing seems to have been lost
(12). The best of these three, “Against Ctetisphone,” requires a
little political history.

Demosthenes, as we’ve discussed
in our earlier episode, was a rabble rouser against King Philip,
the father of Alexander the Great, and the aggressor of the
Hellenistic cities like Athens. He defeated them and then ruled
over them in something called the League of Corinth, sort of a
loose confederation of vassal states. Demosthenes did not like that
and called for activism, which was pretty popular. Aeschines on the
other hand favored peace and capitulatoin with Macadonia and King
Philip. He was badly let down, though, as were the rest of the
pragmatists because they received no gains or special treatment
from the partnership. Defiant Demosthenes gained all the cultural
capital and Aeschines looked like a collaborator.

Demosthenes’ friend, Ctetisphon,
seeks to give a public award to Demosthenes, kind of a lifetime
acheivement award from the state, with some real money attached.
This “Golden Crown” was a civic and almost religious honor : As
Thomas Leland points out, “To give this transaction the greater
solemnity, it was moved that the ceremony should be performed in
the theatre of Bacchus during the festival held in honor of that
god, when not only the Athenians, but other Greeks from all parts
of the nation were assembled to see the tragedies exhibited in that
festival.” So everyone would be fawning over Demosthenes, not
just the Athenians. Aeschines just cannot.Ctesiphon gives public crown to Demosthenes,
Aeschines brings suit against him, and, like an animal to a trap,
Demosthenes shows up in person as a “speaker for
Ctesiphon.”

So there you have it,
head-to-head, Aeschines and Demosthenes in the courtroom arguing
about whether Demosthenes is a public hero or an extravagant
wastrel and war profiteer. Opposition political parties, opposite
managerial styles, opposite backgrounds. You can kind of feel
Aeschines boiling over in this oration. One scholar points out that
“Against Ctesiphon” disorganized, uneven, although powerful in some
places.”

But Aeschines makes three main
claims that range from the reasonable to the vitriolic.

First off, there is the
location. The law specifically says that the award is presented in
assembly and nowhere else, certainly not at the theater! How
humiliating, Aescheines says if “He confers this honor, not while
the people are assembled, but while the new tragedies are
exhibiting; not in the presence of the people, but of the Greeks;
that they too may know on what kind of man our honors are
conferred.” Okay, I could see that.

Also, that the award being given
to Demosthenes is a little preemptive. Aeschines complains about
giving Demosthenes the crown--there hadn’t been a full
investigation into his full character.

But finally, Aeschines says, the
award is supposed to be for people who have excellent character and
Demosthenes, he argues, is the opposite of excellent. He is not shy
about it: “Say, then, Ctesiphon, when the most heinous instances of
this man's baseness are so incontestably evident that his accuser
exposes himself to the censure, not of advancing falsehoods, but of
recurring to facts so long acknowledged and notorious, is he to be
publicly honored, or to be branded with infamy? ”Demosthenes, as a
senator, doesn’t acknowledge diplomats, and he led a lot of
soldiers to their certain death in an ill-fated military campaign.
Aeschines even attacks Demosthenes’ private life because “He who
acts wickedly in private life cannot prove excellent in his public
conduct: he who is base at home can never acquit himself with honor
when sent to a strange country in a public character.”

At the beginning, he says,“An
examination of Demosthenes’ life would be too long a speech,
why should I tell it all now…” then he does, tells tale of primary,
nepotism, violence, heart of it though “the worst of the crimes”
was his greed for a cut of the peace with Philip, benefitted from
war profiteering and perjury, sacrificing the lives of the young
soldiers “as yourselves whether the relatives of the dead will shed
more teachers over the tragedies and sufferings of the heros that
will be staged after this or at the city’s insensitivity” (152). He
holds, even, his bad luck against him, because in ancient Greece,
bad luck in a leader was as indefensible as stupidity.

Look, I’m team Demosthenes and
fighting for independence is always going to sound better than
capitulating to an occupying force and this speech is so venomous
and spiteful that it’s hard not to just dismiss it because it
isso
angry, but Aeschines
does make a lot of good points, and he’s mostly pointing out that
we don’t make exceptions for Demosthenes, which could also be
interpreted as “no one is above the law,” which I find quite
reassuring. The law is a big deal for Aeschines--makes sense, this
is a legal case, and he praises it throughout the speech. Aeschines
proclaims how excellent the law is, how excellent the assembly is:
“A noble institution this a truly noble institution, Athenians!” he
declares.

I’m also sympathetic when
Aeschines alleges the Demosthenes just wants to shut him up. “He
compares me to the Sirens, whose purpose is not to delight their
hearers, but to destroy them. Even so, if we are to believe him, my
abilities in speaking, whether acquired by exercise or given by
nature, all tend to the detriment of those who grant me their
attention. I am bold to say that no man has a right to urge an
allegation of this nature against me; for it is shameful in an
accuser not to be able to establish his assertions with full
proof.” You shouldn’t want to shut up your opposition--that leads
to all kinds of tyrany.

But then again, Aeschines dishes
it out again back at Demosthenes, “But when a man composed entirely
of words, and these the bitterest and most pompously labored when
he recurs to simplicity, to artless facts, who can endure it? He
who is but an instrument, take away his tongue, and he is
nothing.”

In the end, I think the jurors
had the same unpleasant taste in their mouths that we do reading
it--Aeschines comes across and a squirming, angry little man trying
whatever he can to stop his wildly popular rival from getting
praise. In the result of the trial, Ctesiphon was acquitted and
Aeschines failed to get ⅕ of the votes. Aeschines was humiliated
for having brought the lawsuit to the courts, and, because of the
unsuccessful suit, he was slapped with a “fine of 1000
drachmas and (probably) loss of the right to bring similar action
again” to the court. Aeschines left Athens in shame, and ending up
as a rhetoric teacher in Rhodes. As a rhetoric teacher
myself, I don’t think of this as that much of a crushing
ignobility, and, really, history has looked fondly on him,
including him, with his bitter enemy, on the list of the Ten Attic
Orators.

About the Podcast

A podcast for beginners and insiders about the people, ideas and movements that have defined the history of rhetoric.